Kibbutz at odds with educator

A dispute between Kibbutz Gezer management and kibbutznik David Leichman has led to the partial destruction of the outdoor education park, Pinat Shorashim, which was the starting point for the now-decade-old relationship between various entities in the Kansas City area and the Ramla-Gezer region.

The differences between Leichman, who established the park, and the current managers involve costs, payments, permits and other issues of the sort that often lead to lawsuits in the United States.

In Israel, Leichman says he doesn’t want to hurt the kibbutz he helped to establish, and so he has done as the managers have asked — walked away from his creation and turned it over to them.

Who is responsible for the apparent destruction of certain statues and other semi-permanent parts of the park is hard to say from halfway around the world. But the dispute is apparently about to break out into public view with a story in Haaretz, Israel’s leading newspaper, according to Leichman.

A personal connection
Pinat Shorashim is Hebrew for “Corner of our Roots,” and it was Leichman’s experiment in experiential Zionist education. Visitors built grape arbors and sculptures of animals mentioned in the Bible, for example.

Now, the dispute centers on who controls the seven-acre park and its improvements.

Jewish Federation Associate Executive Director Alan Edelman said Pinat Shorashim “is designed to help people make a connection to Israel; to leave a mark in an area. It’s unlike planting trees — which is great, but you never knew where they were. People from Kansas City created pieces of Pinat Shorashim and have that personal connection. My kids go back and make a beeline for the sage garden they helped create. … I am sure other people who created things feel that same attachment.”

Edelman first made the connection with Leichman and helped to build on that relationship over the years, including the establishment of Sister-City relationships between Kansas City, Mo., and Ramla and between Leawood, Kan., and the Gezer Region. Leawood dedicated a new Gezer Park at 133rd Street and Mission Road in October.

Edelman said Tuesday he was sorry to see the split between Leichman and the kibbutz, but that it is part of the overall transformation of the kibbutz movement away from collectivization and toward individualism and bottom-line profit.

Leichman said much the same thing. Kibbutz Gezer today is a far different place than the one he helped to found (reestablish, actually) back in 1976 with such fellow American expatriates as J.J. Goldberg, who is now editor of The Forward, and David Twersky, the former New Jersey Jewish News editor.

Rocky road
“The kibbutz has gone though major changes,” Leichman said this week. “Most people aren’t really involved in the ins and outs. Everyone earns his own salary. There is a secretary general, a mazkir, who is a member, and then there are two other people — the executive director or general manager, and a business manager — and they are hired professionals. They are not members … so you have a situation where a handful of people are making these decisions.”

Leichman sent out a letter to Pinat Shorashim supporters Dec. 27, saying in part: “During the past few months, we have been in negotiations with the kibbutz regarding the amount of ‘rent’ they want us to pay. It seems that they feel the land could be more valuable if developed in a different way. We have had a rocky road with the administration of Kibbutz Gezer for quite some time. In the last couple of years they have created a number of obstacles that made our work very difficult at times. Despite our best efforts, we have not been able to come to an agreement with the kibbutz.”

Leichman said he agreed to vacate Pinat Shorashim at year’s end, although he is still unhappy over the kibbutz’s claim to the trees and other improvements he says his not-for-profit entity made over the past 18 years.

When The Jewish Chronicle inquired of Kibbutz Gezer Mazkira Marcos Ben-Elias by e-mail this week, he responded by polling the kibbutz’s elected secretariat, which issued a letter, saying the kibbutz “deeply regrets the departure” of Leichman’s not-for-profit entity “from its property,” but that issues between the two became insurmountable. (See below for text of letter)

“I intend to continue living at the kibbutz, but I am deeply hurt by what the community has done,” Leichman said. “I was creating this educational philosophy and process … that left a product. And what’s happening today is they are trying to claim the product is theirs, and it’s very uncomfortable. … They want us to leave what people in Kansas City generously gave. … We took seven acres of weeds and turned it into a beautiful, blooming park, filled with educational tools. Those tools will, unfortunately, be lost. …

“We will come to some kind of compromise, I am pretty sure. … The not-for-profit (entity) is not closing. We are looking for alternative ways of continuing, but I am not 100 percent sure that will happen.”

Pinat Shorashim West
Although Rabbi Arthur Nemitoff of The Temple, Congregation B’nai Jehudah, was on sabbatical this week and unavailable for comment, Leichman said the rabbi has proposed that Leichman create a “Pinat Shorashim West” at the Temple’s Cohen retreat center in rural Missouri.

“I am very excited about helping people in Kansas City create not only a park like this, but a way in which it can be used to enrich … Hebrew school and Sunday school in an experiential Jewish way,” Leichman said.

Edelman said he heard that another kibbutz, the Conservative movement’s Hanaton in northern Israel, had asked Leichman to replicate Pinat Shorashim there, too.

Thanks, KC
Leichman said he wanted to thank his Kansas City supporters.

“This is an opportunity to thank … people from the Kansas City Jewish community who have been so remarkably supportive of us, not only economically but also ... the philosophy we’ve been trying to teach. Pinat Shorashim is for everyone who uses Jewish as their last name, whether your first name is Orthodox or Reform or Kansas City or Israeli. If Jewish is your last name, we’re in the same family. And that philosophy is shared by so many people, from the Federation to individuals in Kansas City.”

Leichman said he was “not crying over spilt milk.”

“I am looking to the future, learning from the past,” Leichman said. “What is really most important to me is a world of dear friends, many of whom are in Kansas City, which is almost my second home, and for that I am so grateful. No words can express how my life has been changed by the friendships and relationships I have had with people from Kansas City.”

What about Partnership 2000?
The Jewish Federation and the Gezer Region first established relations in the 1990s, under an international Federation-system program known as Partnership 2000. Alan Edelman said that during the first couple of years, Kansas Citians donated funds to help renovate Kibbutz Gezer’s main office, etc., but that as the years went by, support became focused on activities at Pinat Shorashim, David Leichman’s educational venture.

“It moved to Pinat Shorashim and to Birkat Shalom, (Rabbi) Miri (Gold)’s congregation there. So that’s what we’ve really been funding, not the kibbutz.

“Partnership 2000 was with the Gezer Region. There have been student exchanges; professional exchanges. Our KU kids spent time there and were hosted by families.

“We’re about people to people, not place to place. We still have wonderful relationships with many people who live in Gezer.

“Leawood is doing some exchanges. The Hebrew Academy is working on student exchanges, and we will continue to support Leawood and Kansas City in their Sister City relationships with whatever assistance we can.”

Letter from Kibbutz Gezer Secretariat
The educational project, ‘Pinat-Shorashim,’ was established in 1991 by the kibbutz to advance the values of peace and the environment. Many kibbutz members took part in its establishment and still take pride in its achievements. In 1998, Amutat Pinat Shorashim was established, and this organization took over the management of Pinat-Shorashim. Since 2000 the Kibbutz has received no contributions from the Kansas City Jewish community nor received any support of any kind from anyone in Kansas City or its citizens. We regret if you were ever informed otherwise.

Kibbutz Gezer has invested 7 years of considerable time and effort in assisting Amutat Pinat Shorashim to receive all the permits required by the authorities but alas, despite all our best intentions, those permits were not all granted. Since all the Pinat-Shorashim activity has taken place on kibbutz property, and the Amuta has not succeeded in resolving its activities according to the law, the kibbutz was unfortunately forced to demand that Amutat Pinat Shorashim cease its activity, painful as that decision may be.

As you can see, above, Pinat Shorashim was established on the kibbutz prior to the change in management. During that period, the kibbutz had invested (together with our friends in Kansas City) both work and other resources in the park. To date, the only one to remove anything from the park has been Amutat Pinat Shorashim.

The kibbutz claims that some of the property was in the park before it was turned over to Amutat Pinat Shorashim, and is saddened by its recent destruction out of what appears to be spite. Unfortunately, it would have been preferable for it to be kept for future generations.

Furthermore, the agreement between the managers of the kibbutz and Amutat Pinat Shorashim stipulates that anything left in place is to be accepted by the Kibbutz in exchange for canceling the Amuta’s debt of tens of thousands of shekels to the Kibbutz. The kibbutz, in return, agrees to forgo the debt and to undertake repair and maintenance of the site. Our intention for the future is to maintain the park as an open space for the use of the people who live on Kibbutz Gezer and our visitors.

— The secretariat of Kibbutz Gezer

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